CVS: Employees Must Tell Us Their Weight Or Pay A $600 Fine

If you think it's hard losing those last ten pounds by
yourself, imagine being a manager and trying to get a whole
group of employees in shape.

That's the conundrum facing employers today as they struggle
with rising rates of obesity and spiraling health care costs.
(A study by Gallup
found that absenteeism due to obesity and other chronic
health problems costs employers $153 billion per year.)

And with a provision in the Affordable Care Act letting
companies use a greater share of their insurance payments on
incentive programs, more and are more are dangling money in
front of employees to induce them to shape up.

That's all well and good — but making those incentives
effective is not so simple. For example, CVS Caremark recently joined the parade of
companies tying financial incentives to wellness, telling
employees that they need to undergo a "wellness review" or
pay an annual penalty of $600. The public reaction was swift — and negative.

Roddenberry says CVS is
clearly trying to encourage workers to become aware of their
health status so they will take steps to improve it, and adds
that he has no way to know what impact the program is having.
But he warns that while cash incentives work, "you have to be
really rigorous about what type of program you're rolling
out."

A new study published in the Annals of
Internal Medicine offers some pointers. The researchers tried
offering a group of individuals five monthly cash payments of
$100 each if they met their weight-loss goals each month.

Then they offered groups of five people - none of whom knew
the identities of their fellow members — group monthly
incentives of $500. Only the people who met their goal would
receive a prize, so if only two people succeeded, each would
receive $250.

The difference was clear. After six months, people receiving
the group incentives lost an average of 4.6 kilograms, versus
1.7 for the individual prizes. The individual prizes were
cheaper, kilo for kilo, but less effective.

Clearly the type of financial incentive you are offered will
affect how hard you work at weight loss. But other research
suggests there is another, cheaper way to slim down: with
friends who don't let friends stay overweight. Nicholas
Christakis, a professor of health care policy,
sociology, and medicine at Harvard, has looked at the effect
of social networks on health-related conditions like
obesity.

He found that "If your friends are obese, your risk of
obesity is 45 percent higher," he said in a TED talk. "If your friends' friends are
obese, your risk of obesity is 25 percent higher."

The patterns also hold for weight gain, according to
Christakis. "If your friend becomes obese, it increases your
risk of obesity by about 57 percent in the same given time
period." He has found that weight loss —- and
quitting smoking — also tends to spread the same way.

The bottom line: at least when it comes to losing
weight, money can't buy everything.